The prior art has disclosed a number and variety of interactive electronic calendaring systems and method. The objective of all of these systems is primarily to assist the person who, for a number of different reasons, maintains a calendar of future events containing various information about the events at entry points on the calendar which relate to the time of the event.
The increase of personal computers and intelligent workstations in recent years has made it possible for calendar owners to establish and maintain these calendars on these interactive type data processing systems. Hence, the term "electronic calendaring systems."
Two general types of interactive electronic calendaring systems have thus evolved in the art. In one type of calendaring system, the owner of the calendar is generally also the user of the workstation and that workstation is generally not part of a larger network. Generally, in these type of systems, the calendar function involves presenting a screen to the user which represents a day calendar format divided into a number of time periods. Each period is capable of displaying a limited amount of text that the user enters. In some systems, the day calendar can scroll vertically to present more time periods and/or horizontally to permit longer text entries. The operator can "page" forward or backward and, in most arrangements, can display a requested date. These calendaring methods generally do not limit the type of event that is calendared nor the terminology employed at any of the entry points and, to that extent, function in the same manner as conventional manner calendars or appointment books.
Electronic calendars do possess an advantage over manual entry calendars, however, in that the calendar owner can, in many systems, enter an alarm type entry which places a reminder message on the display screen at a predetermined time and date. The message may also be accompanied by an audio signal in order to get the user's attention. In most cases, the message is a reminder of some subsequent calendared event that the calendar owner has entered.
Another advantage of the electronic calendaring systems is that they often permit the calendar owner to scan a large number of calendar entries covering an extended period of time to find a specific defined entry. This latter function is achieved generally in a manner of seconds.
In general, while this type of electronic calendaring system is an improvement over the manual approach to maintaining a calendar, it does have its limitations. For example, the alarm function, when it is used as a reminder, is completely independent of the event for which the alarm is established. As a result, if the event is cancelled or the time of the event is changed, then a new alarm entry must be created by the user, and the old entry deleted or moved.
The other type of calendaring arrangement that has developed in the prior art involves multi-user environments having a large number of terminals or workstations which are generally part of a larger communication network that has been established to permit the users to interact with each other and with data maintained on the system. In this environment, a user at a terminal or workstation can send a message to one or more of the other users on the network and is notified when the addressee has received and read the meassage. In most of these environments, each user generally maintains a calendar, and in many of these environments the reason for the system interconnections among workstations is dictated by the need of these users to interact. Further, the nature of such interaction generally involves reference to respective calendars.
A considerable amount of time is therefore spent in many organizations, with people checking and rearranging their calendars to accommodate various events such as meetings, presentations, etc. In this environment, the electronic calendaring systems and method have progressed to the point where a person who is calling a meeting can at least view the calendars of a number of users that he intends to invite to a meeting, to determine a common available time for the meeting. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,626,836 filed 11/4/83 entitled "Method of Scheduling Meetings". See also the cross-referenced application Ser. No. 008,034 which describes an improved method of finding a meeting time.
However, in each of those systems, once the meeting time is set and the prospective participants notified of the date, time, and subject of the meeting, each participant must update his own electronic calendar and also reply to the meeting request. While the system can facilitate the request and reply message process, it is sometimes less frustrating to merely use the telephone to arrive at a mutually convenient time.
Co-pending cross-referenced application Ser. No. 008,033 discloses an electronic calendaring method in which replies to meeting requests are developed automatically for the calendar owner, based on criteria that the user has established or a set of default criteria that the system has established. This method is a vast improvement over prior art non-automatic systems. However, in the automatic method, each participant in the meeting must provide an entry into his own calendar to be reminded of the meeting that was automatically calendared for him. This is the same awkward position that the calendar owner who is not attached to a network is in, that is, if the meeting is changed or cancelled, the responsibility for managing the alarm for the calendared event is the receivers' responsibility. The invitee must therefore individually cancel the reminder or move it to the new time if the meeting time has been changed. These functions generally involve programming complexities that are costly and time-consuming.
Electronic calendaring systems also permit calendar owners to enter notes into the system to remind them to do certain things prior to a scheduled event, such as obtaining a current printout of the latest sales figures just before the meeting. If the owner is away from the system at the time the note is triggered by a reminder, there may not be sufficient time to obtain the printout at the time the owner remembers to order the printout.
The present invention provides an electronic calendaring method in which the above-defined problems of the prior art are eliminated. In accordance with this new method, if the calendar owner changes a calendar event entry to a different time, any alarm-type message that the owner entered in connection with the original entry may be automatically changed when its related event is changed.
In a network environment in which calendar entries are created automatically in response to requests by one owner for the other owner's participation in the event, the new method may automatically duplicate for the other calendar owners, any alarm-type messages that the originator has established on his own calendar and can insure that these messages are moved or modified if the time of the event is moved or the event cancelled. The new method also allows an external process that is related to a calendered event to be started automatically at a preset time and float with the related event.